What’s news today?
Looks like Patraeus will be testifying if King has his way, but it will probably take a subpoena.
From TheDailyCaller
“During Saturday’s broadcast of “The Steve Malzberg Show” on ABC Radio’s Washington, D.C. affiliate WMAL, New York Republican Rep. Peter King, the chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, was adamant that former CIA Director David Petraeus should testify before Congress despite his sudden resignation.”
“As far as I’m concerned, the intelligence committee has to interview Gen. Petraeus. Whether or not he’s head of the CIA is almost irrelevant to him testifying,” King said. “He’s the only one who would have the facts that we are looking for, so he’s going to have to testify one way or the other.””
Speaking of needing a subpoena……..
From the WashingtonExaminer
“House investigators asked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to testify next week about the September 11 terrorist attack in Benghazi, but she declined citing a scheduling conflict.
“[Clinton] was asked to appear at House Foreign Affairs next week, and we have written back to the Chairman to say that she’ll be on travel next week,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters yesterday. “She has a commitment with the Secretary of Defense to the AUSMIN Ministerial.” Per AFP, “AUSMIN is the highest level forum for Australia and US consultation on foreign policy, defense and strategic issues.” The United States is reportedly concerned about Australia’s plan to cut their defense spending.
The Blame Game continues, via Politico
“Rush Limbaugh couldn’t have been more right.
Months before the election, the conservative radio host made a prediction: “If Obama wins, the Republican Party is going to try to maneuver things so conservatives get blamed.”
And that’s exactly what’s happening.”
Syrian troops and rebel fighting is spilling over into Israel.
From Reuters
“Israeli forces fired into Syria on Sunday in what the military called a warning, after stray munitions from fighting between Syrian troops and rebels hit the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
The incident, described by Israel Radio as the first direct engagement of the Syrian military on the Golan since the countries’ 1973 war, highlighted international fears that Syria’s civil war could ignite wider regional conflict.”
The rebels are saying if we don’t give them help, they might turn into terrorists.
From TheTelegraph/UK
“In an interview with The Daily Telegraph in his base in rebel-occupied Syria, Gen. Mustafa al-Sheikh unveiled a new leadership of the Higher Military Council of the FSA, which he heads.
He also said he welcomed David Cameron’s decision to engage with the rebels and even consider organising arms supplies, but he added that war was spreading to surrounding countries, the rebels were fractured and speed was of the essence.
“If there’s no quick decision to support us, we will all turn into terrorists,” he said. “If you apply the pressure that’s been applied to Syria, it will explode in all directions. Terrorism will grow quickly.””
Uh, too late.
From the LongWarJournal
“A pair of suicide bombers killed an estimated 20 Syrian soldiers in an attack in the city of Daraa, near the Jordanian border. Today’s suicide attack is the 40th of its kind in Syria in less than a year.”
“The Syrian Arab News Agency, the state-run news service loyal to Assad, claimed that “terrorists on Saturday detonated three car bombs in the city of Daraa, causing the martyrdom of 7 citizens.” SANA claimed that the bombings took place in two separate areas, against civilians.
The suicide attack is the second reported in Syria in the past week. On Oct. 5, a suicide bomber reportedly killed 50 Syrian soldiers in an attack on a military base in Hama in the north.”
Hamas is getting in on the fighting as well.
From Haaretz
“Egypt mediating Israel-Hamas truce as more than 100 rockets hit south”
“Egyptian intelligence officials have been mediating between Israel and Hamas in order to reach a cease-fire agreement that would put an end to the two-day cross-border escalation.
More than 100 rockets have hit southern Israel since violence flared up on the border on Saturday. The IDF has responded with nine separate air strikes, killing five Palestinians.”
I’m not sure about this one. There seem to be many Sandy victims who would disagree.
From NBCNews
“The American Red Cross, which bills itself as “the world’s largest humanitarian network,” is pushing back against critics of its response to superstorm Sandy, with the head of the organization saying its relief effort has been “near flawless” despite criticism from stranded storm victims and elected officials.
Two weeks after the storm slammed the East Coast, leaving millions of residents without power and in need of food, warmth and shelter, the venerable nonprofit has taken a public battering over what many victims and some officials saw as a lackluster and unfocused response.”
“James Molinari, president of the hard-hit Staten Island borough of New York City, on Nov. 1 labeled the organization’s response there “an absolute disgrace” and went so far as to urge its residents not to donate to the largely volunteer agency.”
A huge explosion has rocked Indianapolis.
From CBS
“A huge explosion overnight left a small Indianapolis neighborhood shaken. CBS 2′s Derrick Blakley reports.
Homes were engulfed in flames, as neighbors ran for their lives, and tried to help others. This happened just after 11 p.m. last night in the Richmond Hill neighborhood on Indianapolis’ south side.”
“100 firefighters responded and it took two hours to get the fire under control. Officials found two homes totally destroyed with further damage to dozens more.”
Wandering Views 
On Republican politics, however hard hitting with the truth we ought to be on social issues in our largely private blogs and church relationships, the public face of the party needs to far more moderate. This is the view of wise Republican leaders including Mitch Daniels and Mike Huckabee.
The Democrats are very clever at smearing the Republicans for their “war” against women, the middle class, young people, and minorities. Far right characters including Rush Linbaugh play right into their hands with heated rhetoric, such as calling Ms. Fluke a slut.
Mitch Daniels was vilified by the right for suggesting that Republicans down play social issues both in the primaries and general election. He was right about this. He, also, coming from the heartland and having a winning personality would have been a far more attractive candidate than Romney.
We social conservatives would do well to follow Jesus’ admonition to be as wise as serpents and as simple as doves.
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Sails, I tend to agree.
I also was interested in what Dennis Prager had to say last week in terms of conservatives learning how to better argue their case in the public square.
Extreme examples will always be seized upon by the media, especially. But we don’t always have to provide them with such easy ammunition (i.e. Senate candidates who have theories about rape). 😉
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And don’t lose heart just yet:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/11/bullish-on-the-gop-yes-call-your-broker-and-buy-now.php
Remember the Democrats’ dilemma circa 2004 following Bush’s re-election?
“… The Democratic Party remedied its problems in part by coming up with an attractive product and marketing it very well in two election cycles, which ought to trouble Democrats actually, since that product (Obama) can’t run again. The GOP still has enormous political assets centered around its ideas, and Obama’s continuing mistakes will create opportunities galore between now and 2016. Don’t look for quick fixes. Turnarounds are always painful and take time to take hold.”
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Donna, I agree. After some post-election despair, I now think it’s best to learn from our mistakes and prepare well for 2016 after eight years of the pleasures of the feckless Obama.
My great fear is a failed Treasury auction sometime during the next four years that would inevitably goose the economy into a wicked tailspin.
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Sails, so the answer is to shut up. Isn’t that what they want?
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KBells
The answer is not to shut up, but rather to be smart. Todd Aiken, Richard Mourdock are self-inflicted wounds as was the Limbaugh rant. Huckabee doing an ad that basically says vote correctly or go to heck is not a good advertising campaign.
I’ve said this here and on the old WMB many many times — tone matters.
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Females fighting over … David Patraeus ? Really?
Go figure.
Guess it really is all about the sex appeal that power has for many women 😉
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/target_of_mistress_rage_5jsQegpThXCez0sGKuxHSN
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“Israeli forces fired into Syria on Sunday in what the military called a warning, after stray munitions from fighting between Syrian troops and rebels hit the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.”
Jennifer Griffin (Fox News), in her book The Burning Land, describes the process as it worked in Gaza. The Islamists go into a residential area and fire rockets into Israel.
Israel responds by firing back. Some civilians are killed. Islam and the rest of the world blames Israel and more jihadists are recruited.
Meanwhile, the civilians who were killed are declared martyrs and Allah takes them directly into heaven.
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Chas,
Bibi knows how they play the PR game, but I don’t think he cares. He’ll do what he thinks is necessary.
http://www.jpost.com/Defense/Article.aspx?id=291300
““If we are forced to go back into Gaza in order to deal Hamas a [serious] blow and restore security for all of Israel’s citizens, then we will not hesitate to do so,” he warned.
“It is Hamas that will pay the price; a price that will be painful,” he said.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu also warned, “We are prepared to intensify our response,” speaking at Sunday’s cabinet meeting.
“The world needs to understand that Israel will not sit idly by in the face of attempts to attack us,” the prime minister said.”
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KBells, no, we don’t shut up, though we need to be careful with language, style, and tone. Diplomacy at its best, while moderate, is both strong and effective. We, also, as Mitch Daniels suggested, need to learn how to downplay hot-button social issues.
Ricky Weaver is right that Bush II learned the art of appealing to Latinos without seriously compromising conservative principles. We need to learn the arts of the political game, however malodorous. The reason that the most incompetent and ineffective president in modern history won in 2012 is that the Democrats played the political game rather better. They somehow succeeded in convincing a clear majority of voters that Romney, a wealthy, uncaring white plutocrat, would be at war with women, the middle class, minorities, and young people.
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CB, Sails, twice we sent out the most moderate and mealy mouthed candidate we could find and it didn’t work. Romney didn’t make any headway until he started fighting back. In the meantime they can tell us were racism, woman hating bullies. The only thing the GOP did wrong was to not tell people the lies they wanted to hear.
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One thing that helped the Democrats paint Big Bush and Romney as wealthy, white plutocrats is that they were wealthy, white plutocrats. Peggy Noonan argues that Reagan had the poorest childhood of any modern President. He could always connect to the middle class and large elements of the poor. In the Republican primaries, Reagan was opposed by country club Republicans. I would suggest the next Republican nominee should not be a graduate of an elite prep school as were Romney and the Bushes.
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KBells, Romney’s problem is that he is a fairly wealthy former private equity investor who had to compromise his conservative values in order to win an election for Massachusetts governor..
Mitch Daniels, a moderate, soft spoken, very effective and popular heartland governor with a winning personality would have been a far better candidate. He wisely suggested that in order to solve the debt crisis the Republicans would need to declare a truce on social issues in 2012, for which he was vilified by social conservatives. Yet, according to an article by David Paul Kuhn Daniels
… has attended the same Presbyterian church for a half century. He helped found a private Christian primary school serving inner city Indianapolis. Daniels has consistently opposed abortion. He is no Rudy Giuliani.
‘Daniels is, to the bone, a moral and cultural conservative,’ said Michael Cromartie, a longtime analyst of social conservative politics.
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Ricky, I doubt that having a prep-school background is a political liability. FDR was a Groton man and Kennedy a Choate man, both, also, had a Harvard College degree, These presidents were by and large revered by the public.
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I knew all the time that they should have nominated me.
😆
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Kbells
McCain had Sarah Palin campaigning about the country talking about the “real America” which likely lost him Virginia. Romeny’s campaign had folks talking about taking back “our America” and then in the next breath speaking of Obama’s divisiveness. That kind of messaging doesn’t work if one is trying to win the center.
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Charles, too bad you didn’t run! Your age and wisdom would have trumped that young whippersnaper, the Chicago machine pol. You might have even overcome the liability of being a a devout Sunday School teacher. Hang on there till 2016.
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Sails: If you haven’t done so already, please read and consider what Janie B. Cheaney wrote about the election and social issues.
http://www.worldmag.com/2012/11/everybody_loses
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Tychicus, thanks for linking to the Cheaney article. I fully agree with her view on the cultural decadence of America, especially regarding the matters of abortion and sodomy.
However, Mitch Daniels view is correct that in 2012 social conservativezs would have been wise politically to declare a truce on social issues, as the nation’s fiscal crisis is, at least short-term, preeminent. Should we experience a rather now predictable failed Treasury auction, all of us will likely end up in a serious economic recession or depression. Daniels termed our debt problem the red menace.
The truth is that social conservative from hard necessity need to distinguish between cultural and political realities.
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I posted on that site: Obama can’t lose. His agenda proceeds. He doesn’t care about anything else, including those who thought he cared.
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Some are suggesting that, to win, Republicans need to be more like Democrats.
I don’t care if Republicans win or not. I am not a party man, I am an issue man.
I sympathize for the third party voters, but think they’re mistaken because a third party can never coalesce. Libertarians are physically conservative, but culturally liberal. Some culturally conservative don’t care about the economy. I care about both. The Republicans are not perfect, but carry the banner best.
We now have both cultural and physical liberals who don’t care if they ruin the country.
It isn’t theirs.
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I meant “Fiscal” up there. I was typing too fast.
but you knew what I meant.
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Sails, Having a prep school background is a tremendous disadvantage if you are a Republican as it reinforces a number of negative ideas that the middle class has about Republicans. It is sort of like a Democrat having a father who was a semi-Mau Mau and a mentor who was a member of the Weather Underground. The press had to really work to help Obama overcome those issues.
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Ricky, most people, especially those who voted for Obama, don’t know what you are talking about.
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Obama attended the most elite prep school in Hawai’i. Didn’t he graduate from.Harvard Law School?
When did we last have a president from a non-elite college?
Reagan again, though as a movie star, he, too was far removed from “normal” people.
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Chas, You are certainly right. We have a populace that is increasingly ignorant and a news media that keeps them that way. Part of that is deliberate; part of that is that the MSM is increasingly ignorant.
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Reagan went to a small college and connected very well with normal people. Ford went to Michigan and represented a middle-class district.
Carter was the son of the richest man in his rural county. He suffered from “rich man’s guilt” like the Kennedys, Bushes and Romneys. Few who were born with wealth will be as economically conservative as Reagan, because unlike Reagan, they doubt if they could have made it on their own.
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Ricky, Ford, also, graduated from Yale Law. The fact that The Bushes graduated from Andover and Yale and came from a distinguished family background hardly hurt their chances for national election, though I understand that W was clever at pretending to be a Texas country boy, having once been bested by a Texan in a race for Congress. America for all its egalitarian pretension well understands class distinction. Certainly,
Obama’s family understood this in arranging his admission to the excellent Punahou prep-school in Hawaii.
The problem Republicans have has more to do with their alleged bias in favor of wealth, as distinguished from the supposed Democratic interest in the people.
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Country club Republicans don’t think like Reagan. In 1986 Reagan’s Tax Reform bill had three rates and taxed all types of income at the same rates. Big Bush let the Democrats talk him into raising marginal rates and let his country club buddies talk him into treating capital gains differently than other types of income. Those were steps one and two in the transformation of Reagan’s efficient tax code into the current mess.
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Also, Ford and Reagan were football players. Little Bush and Romney were cheerleaders. Next time, nominate an athlete. If you are going to nominate a cheerleader, choose a woman.
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Ricky, well, of course, Ryan Fitzpatrick from Arizona, the Harvard and Buffalo Bills quarterback married to Liza Harper from Iowa an All American Harvard Soccer player, would be an ideal candidate.
I assume that your Texas Republican, Cruz, a Princeton and Harvard Law graduate elected to the Senate, was helped not hindered by his educational background.
Your contention that excellent educational background at any level is a political is a political liability lacks credibility, whatever the Party involved..
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So the GOP can’t see itself in the mirror as part of the losing problem? Blaming the Conservatives? Really? Can’t they see that the GOP presidents since Reagan have all run as Conservatives, and the moderates have lost each time? Gimme a break. Time to bolt the party and let it die. Time to start anew with a truly Conservative alternative to Democrat and Democrat-light. Perhpas we need a combination of the TEA Party and the current Constution Party, with a little bit of Libertarian-small government.
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I have to chime in to just ask, “What, Peter L?” Didn’t you lay into me before the election for suggesting that very thing? In either case, all the strategizin’ goin’ on here is *the problem.*
Clam up on the social issues *to what end?* Say that strategy gains votes, but for what kind of candidates? Socially conservative ones? Of course not–that’s not how logic works. The result would merely be a more socially moderate party, which, considering all the hand-waving about how a right view of marriage was tantamount to Christian orthodoxy, would be taking the party in the *wrong* direction, no? This is how the slide left *happens,* and how it already *did* happen. It’s amazing to witness how merely *winning* is the goal.
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Peter L, you are talking about Angelo Codevilla’s dream of a Country Party, summarized as follows:
How, for example, to remind America of, and to drive home to the ruling class, Lincoln’s lesson that trifling with the Constitution for the most heartfelt of motives destroys its protections for all? What if a country class majority in both houses of Congress were to co-sponsor a “Bill of Attainder to deprive Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, and other persons of liberty and property without further process of law for having violated the following ex post facto law…” and larded this constitutional monstrosity with an Article III Section 2 exemption from federal court review? When the affected members of the ruling class asked where Congress gets the authority to pass a bill every word of which is contrary to the Constitution, they would be confronted, publicly, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s answer to a question on the Congress’s constitutional authority to mandate individuals to purchase certain kinds of insurance: “Are you kidding? Are you kidding?” The point having been made, the Country Party could lead public discussions around the country on why even the noblest purposes (maybe even Title II of the Civil Rights Bill of 1964?) cannot be allowed to trump the Constitution.
Codevilla prefaced his Spectator article on the Country Party with this:
The only serious opposition to this arrogant Ruling Party is coming not from feckless Republicans but from what might be called the Country Party — and its vision is revolutionary….
Of course, while ideal, this will likely not happen given political reality. However, should a serious Country Party exist, I would be delighted to join it.
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Cruz got away with his education because he is Hispanic. However, the fact that he is a lawyer almost sunk him in the primary.
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CB, I counter your “real America” with Obama’s “clinging to guns and religion” and the divisive things he said this time around are to numerous to mention. I is really hard to fight back when we are held to such a higher standard.
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SP @8:24- Now is the time to build a party, not just before the election. The groundwork has time to mature now, not a few weeks before an election. Gotta lay the foundation and build up rather than starting at the top. Lat week I was saying what I did because we needed to get Obama out. Now we can start working towards the next cycle by getting the grass roots organized and get a candidate the exposure needed to win.
But you already know that, don’t you?
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So, I repeat my question of a day or two ago. Well, not mine, but a question presented to me. How do young people get involved? They want to take back America, bringing it back to sanity, how do they go about it?
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Peter L: I’m not even really that enthusiastic about a third party–I’d take a Republican with a spine (too bad there’s literally only one of those in Congress), but it seems like a self-defeating strategy for establishing a foundation if, during the most visible of elections, where turnout is the greatest, you abandon your candidate in favor of an alternative…when that alternative himself *is the very reason you went 3rd party in the first place.* [And by ‘you’ I mean the generic ‘you’.] It’s just poor marketing.
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Mumsee, Young people (and old) need to pray for and work for spiritual revival. In general, our government accurately reflects the values of our people. Before you can take America back, you must take back its people.
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Kbells
Do conservative voters vote on the basis of guns and religion? Are liberals in San Francisco Americans?
One of the comments is an incomplete description of the opposition. The other would have you believe that some Americans are not really Americans. Which is more divisive? One of these things really is not like the other.
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So, As usual, your slander is true so it’s okay. I could just as easily argue that “real” America is the part of the country where they still believe in the Constitution and think more of their fellow citizens than they do about the opinions of Europeans who have tried to kill us three times in the last century. See how that works.
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Chas, I disagree strongly with this statement:
“We now have both cultural and physical liberals who don’t care if they ruin the country.”
No, we liberals do care, and deeply so, that our country NOT be ruined. We merely disagree about what policies wll lead to the ruination of our country – mainly conservative ones – versus what policies we believe will keep it strong and living up to the best qualities it has.
And I must disagree even more strongy with:
“It isn’t theirs”
Sir, this country, the land of my birth and my loyalty, is EVERY BIT as much mine, and every liberal American’s, as much as it is yours and every conservative American’s. For you to suggest otherwise is, in a word, despicabe.
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